


Isibindi

by avani



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-06-30 10:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: “The Jabari,” Nakia tries again, voice now hoarse with exasperation as well as grief, “are our best—our only—hope.”But the Queen Mother only looks ahead without faltering. “No,” she says, and there can be no argument with that.





	Isibindi

Truthfully Nakia does not expect to be allowed entry, and when the doors to the throne room slide open anyway, she can’t help but catch her breath: is this usurper simply one more who has underestimated a War Dog of Wakanda? But the next moment she knows better; Killmonger, even lounging on his throne, studies her with narrowed eyes. Not careless, then, but cunning—a warrior who prefers intruders close at hand, the better to watch them.

“Hey, beautiful.” A leer, by which she gathers he has been told of the….history she shares with T’Challa. Perhaps he noticed himself, from a stray glance in South Korea or during the combat on the cliff; this is not a man who can afford to forget a single face. “How can I help you?”

She ignores his words and their implications. It’s not him she’s come to see—not yet, at least. Instead she kneels by her grandfather’s seat.  “You know what I must do,” Nakia whispers, voice hoarse even to her own ears.

His gaze flickers in turn to her eyes, her sad smile, her neck; he takes her hands in his and squeezes. “Come what may,” he assures her, “I will always love you, child.”

She wishes that would be enough.

* 

“The Jabari,” Nakia tries again, voice now hoarse with exasperation as well as grief, “are our best—our  _ only _ —hope.”

She does not know how else to phrase her helplessness. The River Tribe is, as she’d joked to T’Challa throughout their childhood, nothing more than a group of gentle fishmongers: they have no army, no wealth, nothing to offer Nakia but their deepest sympathies. They cannot protect these remnants of the Royal Family. They cannot save the country she loves.

Shuri looks from her mother to Nakia but stays silent; the man Ross is not so wise. 

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” he offers; and Nakia might silence him with a sharp word or two if she couldn’t see that he speaks only to overcome a terrible awkwardness in finding himself an outsider for once.

T’Challa saw something in him, she reminds herself, something worth saving. She hopes it wasn’t only that Ross had elected to save her life at the cost of his own.

So gently she reminds him: “It is more a question of no bird in our hands, and half of one—“

“That might peck out our eyes anyway,” adds Shuri helpfully.

“—in the bush.”

But the Queen Mother only looks ahead without faltering. “No,” she says, and there can be no argument with that. The King is dead, and T’Challa too, and the Queen Mother is the first of the remnants of the Royal Family. Nakia has never learned how to defy her. 

*

Now Grandfather, who still knows her so well, rises to his feet. “The throne is questioned,” he declares—the words, the true words, by which a King should be challenged.

This, though, is lost on Killmonger, who only blinks. “You’ll be waiting a while if you want answers from a goddamn chair,” and waves away W’Kabi, always so earnest, before he can explain. 

“Only a member of the royal family can offer a challenge for the Crown,” Killmonger muses aloud, fingers curled before his mouth, “and unless my cuz got busy in the last half-hour he had before I killed him—“

Nakia rises to her feet, almost involuntarily, and hates herself for it, almost as much as she does Killmonger when he smirks down at her.

“—That ain’t you, sweetheart.”

“A member of the royal family,” corrects Grandfather, which is fortunate as she doesn’t trust herself to speak at the moment, “or the heir to one of the five tribes.”

Killmonger’s brow furrows; Nakia catches her breath once more, this time in relief at having caught him unawares. She had hoped, of course, and pleaded with Bast for mercy, but it had been hard to trust in hopes or prayer these last few hours. But perhaps the goddess walks with them still: perhaps she has not turned her face from Wakanda.

“The heir to the River Tribe was detained when the King offered his challenge,” says Grandfather, “and her presence required elsewhere before she could offer challenge of her own. But today—today she returns to make her claim.”

*

As long as she can remember,  _ family  _ has meant only Grandfather. The River Tribe might have been less harshly affected by Klaue’s rampage than the Border Tribe, but affected nonetheless; Nakia’s parents survived long enough to create and raise and love her, but everything else was Grandfather’s doing. 

From him she learned to love calm and quiet: after his example she learned to watch and wait.

Above all he taught her the responsibilities of an heir.

Once it might have meant some degree of power—but today the King’s authority is absolute. Of course it comes with the expectation that she should be the best warrior of the Tribe, but that is not at all difficult to achieve. The River Tribe was meant to supply food and festival; its members’ muscle toned for dance rather than defense. Nakia overcomes her peers as easily as her mother once did.

Put that way, it seems rather stupid that they should exist at all. 

When Nakia makes the mistake of telling this to Grandfather, he shakes his head. True that the heirs might only be of use for one thing and one thing only, but that did not mean they should be any less valued. The Tribes remain for a reason, after all, despite the Black Panther’s leadership. The Elders must advise him, prevent him from imprudent action, and if he should not listen—

Then it was for the Heirs to stop him with the strength and sacrifice of their own bodies.

*

“No,” says Killmonger at once.

“You came to the throne by way of challenge, my King,” Okoye says, voice carefully toneless. “How can you now refuse?”

“Because I’m in charge,” he snaps back, “and that means I do as I please—“

Nakia laughs. She can’t help it, can’t stop until tears prick at her eyes: this is no dreaded enemy, has never been. This is a  _ boy _ , sullen and angry, nothing to fear. She laughs again, louder, and that does the trick where logic and law failed. He rises from his throne, teeth bared.

“Wait,” she says, solemn again. “Wait. First I require that all matters of state come to a halt.”

Killmonger stops short. “Nice try. But if you think those transports aren’t taking off as soon as they’re loaded—“

“The challenger is within her rights to set conditions.” Okoye again, still stone-faced. Nakia nods at her gratefully regardless.

“You have ordered that weapons be sent on their way. My first order, when I win, will be to see them destroyed,” Nakia explains. “Who will the country obey? Better to wait and see where the dust settles.”

“I—“

He opens and closes his mouth, and she remembers that his name was Erik Stevens; that in some ways, he was as much a stranger to Wakanda as Ross. She should despise him for it. She wants to, very much. 

“Let’s go,” Stevens snarls, and she does not follow him. She is not his to command, nor will she ever be. If she is defeated, better to die than yield to such a King. A War Dog lies about many things, but she would be helpless to break the word given in ritual combat, squeezed out of lungs desperate for air, etched in her own blood—

Nakia can’t think of that now. Instead she turns on the transmitter in her ear. “Princess—“

“I’m in,” Shuri gasps, “we’re in, we see the transports in front of us, we only need time, Nakia, please—“

She bows her head on impulse, as though the Princess could somehow see her. How foolish habits can be. “Very well.”

*

The first thing Nakia learns in her years as a War Dog is to fall. 

At least so she thinks of it. She is not….particularly popular the first few months of her training. Everyone knows of her: the girl who refused the prince’s proposal,  the girl who broke T’Challa’s heart and his father’s hopes all at once, the girl who looked upon Queen Ramonda’s serene smile, hiding so much of her secret self, and thought:  _ No _ , or perhaps,  _ Not yet _ . Wakanda is a grand and glorious city, but when it comes to gossip, it is no better than the village it pretends to be. And so the War Dogs know, too, that she only sought out a place with them to flee the whispers about her, in place of any sincere desire to serve.

In atonement Nakia forces herself to work harder than all the others: to learn languages more quickly, to strike more forcefully, to always be the last one standing at end of their practice fights.

Still the Matron of the War Dogs does not smile until the day Nakia, despairing and distracted, is knocked off her feet by her opponent. 

“There,” she says, approving at last. “Where there is success, there must always be arrogance, and where there is arrogance, failure.  _ Now _ we can make something of you.”

The first lesson the War Dogs learn is to fall, to fail, to learn from their mistakes—and that will be the last lesson Erik Stevens learns.

*

The third time she falls to the ground, it really is her own fault. She had been looking behind her, trying to catch Grandfather’s eye and wishing he could have excused himself. Impossible; Grandfather would find it as difficult to ignore his duty as does she. Instead he stands and bears silent witness as his only granddaughter fights the King of Wakanda—and loses badly.

Stevens refused to sacrifice the powers of the Heart-Shaped Herb. Nakia did not expect him to, though Okoye looked horrified and even W’Kabi appeared uneasy: they could only persuade him to respect the ritual so much, after all.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” 

To think she’d worried what might happen if he forced her to choose between yielding and death! No, Stevens is not a man for mercy: he will kill her, as he is trained, and be done with it. In the end, she’ll be nothing more than one more scar on his body.

And that too, she understands without wanting to. It is not so very different from the fact that Nakia commits to memory the face of everyone she has ever helped. On nights that last too long, on days where her actions seem barely indistinguishable from those she defies, she recites their names to herself, one by one.  _ This is who I am _ ,  _ this what calls me, this is what I must do _ \--that is what that list really means-- _ no matter how much it might seem otherwise.  _ For a second, she imagines Stevens himself, counting his scars to recommit himself to his mission, convincing himself that all his cruelty and carnage might be meant for a higher purpose, changing all his foreign-bred passion into a power only Wakandans know.   

It’s a second she doesn’t have. Stevens kicks her forward, fallen as she is, and the roar of the waterfall comes ever closer, drowned out only by the rush of blood in her ears. Before she can stop herself, she thinks: This is what T’challa heard, before he died. He hadn’t heard his mother’s gasp, Shuri’s stifled sob, Nakia’s own soft “No”; instead, only this, the river calling its own. He hadn’t heard how much they mourned him. How could he? And perhaps that was a kindness in that. 

“What a waste of time,” Stevens grumbles, now that Nakia is only five, four, three steps away from the edge. He’s drawing it out, theatrical despite his protests otherwise, and she can see why. To defeat one challenger to the throne allowed him a right to the throne; to defeat two made that right unquestioned. No one would dare defy him, should he win today, any more than they would deny his right to be N’Jadaka, and that was exactly what he wanted. 

For an instant, Nakia almost pities him enough to allow it--or perhaps it’s only the longing in her bones to be with T’Challa once more--but then, almost as though the Princess had planned it so, Shuri’s voice crackles in her ear: “Done! I’m all done, they’re down!”

She needs hear no more. Grimly, Nakia reaches for her collarbone--and more importantly, the necklace that rests there. 

*

Nakia has always loved T’Challa. 

There it is, the stark truth she has never been able to hide in all of her disguises. “Who is he?” she has heard, in French, in Arabic, in Korean; “Who are you thinking of?”

A charmer, she wants to reply; a champion, a clown--and before any of that, a Crown Prince, with responsibilities that will eclipse her dreams as surely as the moon does the sun. 

Little it matters now, now that he is only a corpse at the bottom of the river, lost to her forever.

But when Shuri approaches her, snow flying about her hair, and carefully placed T’challa’s silver claws over her neck, she whispers, “The Black Panther lives--and I will fight with her.”

Nakia knows what Shuri intends, and that she ought to be grateful for it. But instead, all it means to her is that a part of T’Challa, against all reason, is still alive--and that it will be Nakia’s task to see him avenged. 

*

The suit slips its way down her body. Nakia has seen it do so before, on T’Challa, but witnessing and wearing are two very different things, and had she the time, she might pause to reflect on the oddness of the sensation. As it happens, she does not: instead, she lifts her leg up to kick at Stevens’ chest, and he, utterly unprepared staggers. 

It’s less than she hoped for--far better he fell outright--but it is enough to allow her time to scramble back from the edge. Grandfather does not forget himself enough to cheer outright, as she might have, but his sigh of relief is enough reassurance. She hears a quick inhale behind her-- Okoye, more likely than not--and that is enough warning to meet Stevens’ punch with her suit. It flashes purple, storing up energy, and Stevens glowers. 

“That shit can’t protect you forever,” he points out, and Nakia, face safely concealed behind her mask, can smile. 

“I know,” she says, and slashes out at him once more.

*

The Black Panthers of old do not come for her in the Djalia, no more than do her parents. Nakia tries not to be stung, but when even T’Challa proves absent, she wonders if all the stories she has ever heard are only just that.

Her skepticism lasts only as long as it takes the panther to approach behind her, padding silently as do all predators. But her eyes are purple, not gold, and her voice, when she speaks, echoes uncomfortably in Nakia’s head.

“You’re a new one,” she says, and Nakia falls to her feet.

“Lady Bast,” she breathes, as much as one might have need to in such a realm. “Please--forgive my audacity--I know it is not my place--”

Bast’s lips turn upwards as much as a panther’s might; ostentatiously she twists her body into a sprawl. “Your place? When I gave Bashenga knowledge of the Herb, I did so only because his spirit amused me. I don’t see what his blood had to do with it, any more than yours does.” She yawns. “If I have need of blood, I have my own ways of procuring it.”

Such words from a goddess are never comforting, and Nakia falls back onto the speech she had practiced before letting the Herb burn its way down her throat. “Only the most desperate of times could have led me to take such power for myself. An usurper sits on Wakanda’s throne--he must not be allowed to persist--”

“ Must he not? It is time for a change,” says Bast, quite calmly. “In that, among other things, Bashenga’s descendant is not mistaken.”

“You can’t agree with him,” Nakia snaps, too appalled to remember who she addresses. 

But Bast, apparently, takes no offense. “Enough time has passed since I walked the earth with my protege,” she murmurs, “that all his descendants bring me equal pride and shame.”

“This more than most. He will ruin Wakanda--He will destroy the world--”

“I gave Bashenga the Herb,” Bast interrupts, quite contrary to everything Nakia has ever been taught, “not to bring peace, not to reward his virtue, but because he wanted it enough. And you, Nakia of the River Tribe? Can your resolve equal his?”

She is nothing but a War Dog, who was once only first among fishmongers, but this answer Nakia knows. “No,” she says, and does not look away. “I can outdo it.”

*

When the Dora come forward, Nakia takes it as a compliment. Their spears are perhaps not as tightly clutched, their postures not as ramrod straight, but they see her as enough of a threat for their defending King to need assistance. Stevens sees them, too, from the corner of his eye, and reads the same message in their actions, though with significantly less good grace.  “Fall back,” he hisses, never taking his eyes from Nakia.

“My King--” Okoye begins.

“Fall back!” He roars, and even stumbles somewhat in his agitation. It is the first thing that gives Nakia new hope. 

Okoye does not do anything so undignified as shrug, but the Dora’s spears are lowered once more, and they retreat. That she is grateful for; not out of justified fear of their prowess, but out of a relief that Okoye won’t have to live with the guilt of taking up arms against a friend. 

The fight continues. Stevens’ surprise fades, and of course he is stronger, and far more single-minded; if it came down to a question of taking his life, Nakia doubts she could do it before he overpowered her. 

It is fortunate, therefore, that she is, after all, only a War Dog, and she has another end in mind. 

*

“Oh, of course it is the Heart-Shaped Herb we herbalists were bid to care for above all, but that hardly means we knew nothing of any others. Nor,” the Queen Mother muses aloud, “that none of the others had potency and powers of their own.”

Shuri clicks her tongue, and Ross, wisely, hies himself further away. “Is this the right one?” she demands, holding up a pale bloom for her mother’s inspection, but Ramonda only shakes her head. 

“White petals with a heart of  _ crimson _ ,” she corrects. “Not scarlet.”

Shuri grinds her teeth with frustration; Nakia thinks it wiser to intervene. “Here, Queen Mother,” she says, surrendering the flowers she’d gathered. “I hope these will be enough?”

Ramonda studies her offering.. “That will do,” she says, and then, with a smile: “You might have made a fine member of our ranks, Nakia, if you only had chosen so.”

The Queen Mother’s smile is a glorious thing--it shines with such warmth that it draws things from one, things unexpected and rare, like the question Nakia dares ask at last, now that it no longer matters. 

“When you became Queen,” she asks, “did it change you? More than you expected? More than you would have been willing to give, had you known?”

“It did.” Nakia’s heart falters, until the Queen Mother adds: “But not so much that I lost myself. Always I was Ramonda, herbalist of the kingdom, wrapped in the skin of a Queen. And today I will save my kingdom.”

“As will I,” Shuri reminds her. “And Nakia.”

“Yes,” agrees the Queen Mother, “each in her own way. We can do nothing else, we women.”

*

“Yield,” she gasps with her next blow, and Stevens laughs at her. Too soon, she knows, but she feels she owes it to herself to ask before it is too late. 

His fist flies towards her chin; she catches it barely in time. So much easier it is to fight when she need not disguise her reflexes and her speed! With luck, Nakia thinks she might have lasted at least a few seconds in battle against him, even had she not taken the Herb; now, with it, she can stretch out that time to minutes. Long enough, at least, to offer mercy.

Or at least she might, if she could remember--

“Your thumb,” says Shuri, sounding every bit as annoyed as she ever did with T’Challa. “Press the pad of your thumb and the claws will activate.”

“I knew that,” Nakia mutters; the claws glow purple. Stevens will think it just more collection of kinetic energy, stored up in her suit and used on a single strike--unsurprisingly, he dodges when she swings at his shoulder, sneering as she does no more than scrape the skin there.

He is still sneering when the potion takes effect.

If he had done things as he should--if he had taken the challenge as a King ought to, free of the power that the Herb gave him--it should be no surprise. He would have fought honorably from the start, and Nakia should have been compelled to do the same. He would have been N’Jadaka, rightful King of Wakanda by conquest, rather than the usurper Killmonger.

Instead:

“What the  _ hell _ did you do?” he snarls, bent over and clutching his belly. He slumps outright as the power fades from him, and swears.

“Yield,” Nakia repeats. A part of her, unkindly, hopes he will refuse, that he might know what it is to be thrown from the waterfall himself, to live those seconds before his body breaks on the rocks below. A part of her hopes he will agree, so that she might teach him that there are worse things than death. 

She looks into his eyes, and knows which he would prefer, and which she will choose for him. He knows better than to expect kindness from her. Even if he did ask for death, she would deny him the pleasure -- he will not escape her so easily. He says nothing, and Nakia nods to Okoye, who comes forward with Ayo, to take him away: a deposed King is eligible to be executed for treason, or at the very least imprisoned until the new Queen determines it is time for his trial.

Stevens struggles in their grasp only long enough to spit with surprising accuracy at Nakia’s feet. “Bitch.”

“Panther,” she corrects quietly, and waits until he has gone to let her legs give out. It is almost funny; all those years spent fleeing such a fate, and here she is today, Queen regardless. Somewhere, Bast must laugh. Would it have been easier to have simply married T’Challa from the start?

Easier, yes, but not true to who she is and must be. That makes the difference.

The crowd whispers again, and Grandfather is there behind her, a gentle hand on her shoulder helping her to rise. 

M’Baku of the Jabari stands before her, surrounded by his people, two of whom heft--is that a stretcher? Surely not, surely the body that rests upon it cannot be--

“Well, then,” he booms. “Looks like we missed all the fun!”

*

“My Queen.”

T’Challa insists on bowing ostentatiously every time he enters the throne room. Nakia watches him, suspicious even after all these weeks that it might hide lingering fatigue from having overexerted himself; but T’Challa’s face when he rises is bright with laughter.

“You are being ridiculous,” she says instead. “Stop it.”

“And turn my back on years of tradition?” He approaches, though, to lean on the arm of her throne. They are alone, after all, and can take such liberties. 

“I heard the royal prisons see a very regular visitor,” Nakia says after some time and T’Challa straightens. 

“Nakia--”

“He is not your cousin,” she reminds him. “He worked--willingly!--with Klaue, he killed Zuri, he killed you--”

“ _ Tried _ to kill me.” On seeing her expression, he adds: “I do not propose that he should be pardoned, only--understood. He deserves so much from us.”

Understanding is one thing; forgiving, as T’Challa seems determined to do, quite another. Nakia looks down at her hands, resting in her lap. “Only one more reason,” she says at least, “why you would make a better ruler than me.”

T’Challa takes her hands in his. “Not a very good one,” he begins, but Nakia shakes her head.

“In a week’s time you will be King,” and T’Challa smiles, as he does every time he hears any mention of their wedding, “and I--The world is changing, T’Challa. How long can Wakanda stay hidden, keep ourselves and our resources from those who need us? Already you say Captain America and Tony Stark already know of you--and how long will it be before they decide they ask for our assistance, even outside Wakanda?”

“Where the King cannot go,” finishes T’Challa, understanding as he does so often, what she does not say. “But you can.”

“Yes.” It is not the calling she imagined; it is not even a calling she can be certain she wants. But for her revenge she promised Bast resoluteness, and if this is the price the goddess expects, she will pay it. 

The Black Panther can do no less. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> * Fandom, it has been six months and still this fic does not exist. So I had to write it myself. (Alternately, if it does exist somewhere, please let me know so I can read something other than my own poor attempt!)  
> * As far as I know, there's no canon or quasi-canon information available on Nakia's backstory, other than she is the heir to the River Tribe. Therefore, pretty much everything I've mentioned --other than the "fishmonger" quip, which can be found in the deleted scene from T'Challa's childhood--is entirely from my own imagination.  
> * The same goes for Ramonda's past, except there I believe it's possibly canon that she was a Dora? When I watched the film, her ease with making the Herb potion to resurrect T'Challa made me assume she had been one of the botanists/biochemists we see working with Zuri, and it's been hard to let go of that headcanon.  
> * Bashenga and the Djalia are both terms stolen from the comicverse.  
> * Isibindi, to the best of my knowledge, is the Xhosa word for “courage, resolve.”  
> * I've tried my best to keep this accurate to the mishmash of African cultures shown in the film--however, if there is a cultural/religious/etc mistake I have made, please let me know so that I can fix it!


End file.
